"REAL" Life Trips: Create Your Own Life Trip


What is more exciting than exploring your city that you live? Take a couple of cameras, your students and leave your ambitions behind! This is where you create Life Trips for other schools to see. Below are directions in how this can be done.
Materials Needed:
Video Camera
Maps
Marker
Questionnaires

Field Work- Exploring Your Urban Community
The first part of this lesson is conducting fieldwork out in urban areas. In groups students will interview people of different social status. Below is the questionnaire we developed while exploring the city of Bangkok. We did have the questionnaire translated into Thai. We also had a translator join us with us.

Example of Questionnaire:
Questions to be asked
We are teachers interested in Bangkok and Thai culture. We are doing a project that explores the daily life of people living in Bangkok. To do this we interviewing and videoing some residents asking them questions about their daily paths through the city. The videos will be posted on the internet for students to see.

1. What is your job/what are your jobs?
2. Describe a typical workday?
3. What are the main reasons that have you traveling around the city ?

Videoed Section
4. Can you show, using the map, where you go, when, and why?
5. Tell me about your normal day. (Story Telling)


The process of interviewing went as followed:
A. Introduction of group and reason for project.
B. Once the interviewer agree we pulled out camera, map and questionnaire. Translator would ask the questions. One colleague would record the event as it unfolds. This is optional footage.
C. When translator gets to question #4 a second colleague would map out how the individual being interviewed would move throughout the city. The recoder would film this process in action.
D. Last part of the questionnaire, we would rerecord the conversation going over the daily routine. This will be part of the final project, thus essential.

Observations:
As we went on the journey it became obvious that without the guide it would have been almost impossible to do. For the most part people were very willing to be interviewed. The formal sector tended to be harder to convince compared to the informal sector. Overall this part of project was extremely exciting and worthwhile.

Step #2
Next you will upload your videos onto iMovie compile your information into 1 to 2 minute episodes. On your own wiki you will have students create profiles similar to the examples here.

Step#3
Teacher will submit a request to join page. This will be done by sending a direct link of your students work to the administrator of the website. Once approved the teacher will gain editing rights. At that point you will add your country ton the ‘ CityIndex’ for other schools to potentially explore.